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Magic portals and floating donuts are just a few of the offerings in this Stranger Things inspired Henry Danger AR experience. Good news to all those looking to enter the Upside Down. You no longer need a psychokinetic 12-year old to rip open the fabric of space time in order to enter the parallel dimension! Leading up to Halloween, Nickelodeon

Stand Out: VR Battle Royale is one of the most ambitious VR games on the market right now. It’s in Steam Early Access and it pits about 30 players against one another on a single, large map in a fight to the death. It’s battle royale game of course, like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) but it’s entirely in VR. You have to physically reload your guns, you can climb around on the environment, and even duck to take cover. Raptor Lab is a small indie studio so it’s extremely unpolished and rough around the edges, but it’s got a dedicated community and is tons of fun if you can look past the shortcomings. Well, now they’re pushing things even further with War Dust.

War Dust features twice as many players as Stand Out, with 64, and will include tons of vehicles, large objective-based maps, and more to try and make your Battlefield VR dreams a reality. It’s just now in Alpha (not even Early Access or Beta yet) so it’s even rougher than Stand Out, but it sure does sound impressive.

You can see in the trailer above that War Dust is much more than just another VR FPS. You can fly jets and helicopters, drive tanks and ATVs, and so much more. In a press release the company sent me, they say that their vision for War Dust is to “create a feeling of being a part of a real epic war” rather than just small-scale skirmishes like other VR titles.

Obviously, the concern is player count. Firewall Zero Hour is a PSVR-exclusive 4v4 multiplayer-only shooter on PSVR and even that game sometimes has down times and Sony was concerned about player counts — and there are three million PSVR headsets out there. I highly doubt there are that many Rifts, Vives, and Windows VR headsets combined but that isn’t stopping Raptor Lab.

In War Dust you and 31 other players join together for a massive 32v32 battle with all 64 of you on the same map at the same time fighting it out. Then having to worry about aerial enemies, dogfights, tanks, and more honestly seems too ambitious to be real.

It’s worth mentioning that Raptor Lab doesn’t have the greatest track record with actually finishing games. Their Steam catalog is already four games deep and now War Dust is on the horizon. Both Stand Out, their battle royale offering, and Deus Vult, a fantasy-themed melee action game, are still in Early Access and have been for a while.

Now with lots of VR FPS games on the horizon, like Zero Caliber, Warzone, Population One, Virtual Battlegrounds, and plenty of existing titles as competition, War Dust won’t have an easy time getting 64-players online at all times.

You can find more information about War Dust on the official Steam page and if you’re interested in joining the Alpha test period, which starts today on October 12th, 2018, then you can do so at the company’s official Discord server here.

I’m usually not a big fan of procedural generation in games. While I’ve obviously spent my fair amount of time exploring planets in No Man’s Sky and clearing out ships From Other Suns with friends, typically I’d prefer a hand-crafted experience that is higher quality that I can play once and remember fondly, than replaying a game over and over with a hodge-podge of similar levels. But then a game like In Death comes along.

In Death is really something special. If this game were not in VR it’d be an entirely unremarkable and boring bow and arrow shooter with light procedural elements, but since it takes place inside of VR, it’s dramatically enhanced. The premise is simple: the kingdom of Heaven is overrun and in ruins and it’s up to you, an angelic bow and arrow being, to swoop in and clear out the tainted medieval castles to restore balance.

In Death takes heavy inspiration from classic roguelike games in that every time you play you start from the beginning and work your way through the layers of the world. There are no save points and each time you die, the layout, enemy spawn points, types of enemies, and more are all shuffled around. Similar to The Persistence, it really does feel like a different experience each time.

Obviously the walls, floor, objects in the environment, and textures all mostly look about the same, but the paths you take and even the enemies you fight will change. Instead of totally randomizing things, there is a progressive element to what you unlock.

Thankfully, the core gameplay is so solid that it’s just a blast to play on a moment-to-moment basis. While exploring the castle you have your basic arrow for shooting, but then you can also shoot a teleport arrow or toss a teleport shard to move around the environment. There are artificial movement options as well in the settings if you want to turn those on. But frankly, the teleportation was such an integral part of the gameplay and fit the setting, it’s all I really used.

Once you get your bearings and get the hang of the arrow trajectory and physics, it’s the best VR bow and arrow I’ve seen to date. I was able to get headshots from way across levels and fire off a rapid volley of arrows that archers in Skyrim or QuiVR would be jealous of. There’s a cross bow too, but everyone knows a bow and arrow are way cooler.

In addition to your bow you’ll find a bunch of special arrows either scattered around the world or for purchase at one of the currency checkpoints that enable things like scatter arrows, fire arrows, and more. You can also summon a shield on your non-dominant hand to block projectile attacks like other arrows. If enemies close in on you for melee attacks (and they will, often) you can also bash them with your shield to make room or use the teleport shard to quickly move out of the way.